This paper chronicles important events surrounding the desegregation of Los Angeles public schools, focusing on underlying political factors and roles of various individuals and community groups in the desegregation process. The author's principal contention is that Los Angeles schools remain segregated because powerful individuals and groups have effectively coalesced to prevent effective desegregation. First, the history of the city's school desegregation plan is reviewed and its current features described. The roles of the School Board, the Superintendent, the court system, local and State political officials (such as the mayor and city council, the governor's office, the State legislature, and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education) are discussed. The impact of a 1969 court case, Crawford vs. Los Angeles Board of Education, and its subsequent appeal on the maintenance of racial segregation in the city's schools is explained. Minority (black, Chicano, and Jewish) community leadership is also discussed in relation to desegregation politics, and the unlikelihood of a coalition between these groups is cited as weakening their already limited possibilities for bringing about desegregated schools. Finally, some of the problems and prospects of metropolitan (interdistrict) desegregation and the general political future of school desegregation in Los Angeles are considered. (GC)